“Putin’s Kiss” to Compete at Sundance Film Festival

Putin’s Kiss, a documentary directed by Danish filmmaker Lise Birk Pedersen, has been selected to compete in this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Pedersen’s documentary was one of 12 films selected from hundreds of international documentary submissions.

Competing in the category of World Cinema Documentary, Putin’s Kiss follows Masha Drokova, an ambitious teenage girl who is a member of Russia’s nationalistic youth movement, Nashi. Drokova is a rising star in the popular movement until she meets a group of liberal journalists who cause her to rethink Nashi’s questionable tactics.

Pedersen was inspired to make the film after a visit to St. Petersburg put her face to face with modern Russia.

“I had never seen so many expensive cars in my life and there were so many modern, young women with a modern attitude,” the director said in an interview with Indiewire. “So I wanted to make a film about the new Russia.”

Though citizens of Russia may have a new attitude, their views of democracy often differ from the views of other Europeans. Putin’s Kiss examines these different interpretations and shows how one young Russian woman struggles to reconcile them.

“I'm from Denmark, where democracy has been hammered into my head since school. But with people like Masha, they never had the education on what is a democracy,” Pedersen said. “She'd go out and do a political action with Nashi for instance, and then she'd cover it up as a journalist. So she wouldn't see the conflict [in her roles] between political activist and journalist. She didn't realize you shouldn't do that. But when she met Oleg and these liberal journalists, she started to realize what she was doing.”

Held each year, The Sundance Film Festival is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Both American and international independent filmmakers showcase their work at Sundance, and the festival is comprised of both competitive and non-competitive sections. The 2012 Sundance Film Festival takes place in Park City, Utah, January 19 – 28.